


Sometimes the Troubles Work Themselves Out

by gracca_amorosa



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: Canon Rewrite, F/M, Haven, I'm fixing the last three seasons, Other, Troubles (Haven), by making people LESS horny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-21 00:17:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16148582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracca_amorosa/pseuds/gracca_amorosa
Summary: Duke Crocker and Nathan Wuornos both try to love Audrey Parker. Is there any way they both can?





	Sometimes the Troubles Work Themselves Out

1.  
The new agent was pretty. 

Nathan Wuornos hadn’t been able to feel anything for years, at least physically, but he still knew what a pretty woman looked like.

He had yanked her out of her car before it tumbled off the cliff and now they were standing close, very close, and he almost thought he could feel the heat off her body. But he knew it was just wishful thinking.

It had to be wishful thinking.

Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling as he was driving Special Agent Parker to the station. He couldn’t feel touch but he could feel her eyes on him and it was pressing down on him like a lead weight. He never spoke much (a trait he figures he learned from his father: if you don’t want ridicule, don’t speak) but for whatever reason Audrey Parker’s presence strangled him.

He told himself it was because she couldn’t know about Haven, about what happened here. He told himself it was because she was blonde, and soft-eyed, and had a smile good enough to melt his own father’s heart.

He told himself it was rational, but his Trouble didn’t stop him from feeling the tightness deep down in his gut every time he laid eyes on her.

2.  
The first time Duke Crocker saw her he was in handcuffs. This in and of itself wasn’t too surprising, he sometimes felt that he was cuffed more than not (the thought made him smile, and he could practically feel the soft bodies of more than one beautiful girl).  
She thought she was confident, but she wasn’t – not really. He could tell a lot about a person by their walk, by their aura, although he avoided using the word in case someone thought he was full of shit. HE had learned how to read a person from the barest hints because he had to; at least, twenty years ago, in his youth, he had had to. Now it was a matter of pride.

He talked a big game though, when he was handcuffed to the table. His bravado would impress this new girl, this girl who didn’t know what was wrong with this shit town, this girl who might be naïve enough to fall for it. He could see in her eyes she would fall for it.   
Her face wormed its way into his imagination. When he was let go (he was always let go) he went back to the Cape Rouge and tried to drink away the injustices of the day, but he couldn’t drink away her face. In an interaction of only a few minutes, a star had been born.

It was a good thing he had such good taste.

3.  
Her stay in Haven was both a blessing and a curse. The Troubles seemed to ramp up with her around, but she was so adept at helping the people affected that they settled down, too. It was a tremulous peace, only a relative peace, but it was a peace. Her life with the Bureau had been so hectic that she had little time for personal connection, but in this little fishing town she felt like she might be able to do just that. She could feel Nathan looking at her and she didn’t mind it, and the smuggler had invited her to dinner – but she had had to turn him down. Already she had turned down a date, because of the Troubles. Because of her work.

But riding around with Nathan was comforting.

4\.   
Nathan was shocked when she kissed him. Not because she kissed him, but because he felt it. Really felt it, really felt soft lips on his cheek and the heat from her body, and he knew that he had been feeling her all along. And the way she looked at him after, a slight hesitation, a hand lingering on his arm, hit him right in the gut in a way that no woman had before. He didn’t believe in fate, but he had faith in Troubles.

Was this all this was? A Trouble?

5\.   
Duke kept trying to woo her – anyone could attest to the fact that he didn’t give up on a woman lightly. If a beautiful woman was worth it, then it was worth it to pull out all the stops for her; in this case, all the stops was mostly just helping her out with cases and trying not to be too obvious with his “illegal” activities, but it had the added benefit of annoying the shit out of Nathan. But the more he helped the more he did it to actually help people. The looks on people’s faces when the black sheep of Haven swooped in and saved somebody, when he helped out a little kid or an old lady, was enough to get his heart pumping again.

6.  
It wasn’t a trouble. Audrey had to reassure Nathan of that, over and over, but eventually he did believe her. And he did kiss her back, deeply and lovingly and completely. She gave herself over to her growing love for him and he fell into her touch like it was a deep swimming pool. They lived in each other’s sunlight and shadows and every moment spent together was better than the one before.

7\.   
He had lost his chance with her. Duke was his hard by this knowledge, harder than he expected to be. He had lost out on chances with women before, more than a few, but he had never felt the ache like he did this time. Sad, sure, but not the pain of losing someone close like – like what? He and Parker were never particularly close, but it was still a knife in his gut. He hid away from her, hoping that would dull the edge but it really, really didn’t.  
Instead, he threw himself into his work. His legitimate, savior-type work. He was still there, side by side with her and Nathan who, as little as he wanted to admit it, did actually make her happy. So he made himself pretend to be happy.

There were enough grateful, beautiful girls to be rescued that eventually he really was happy.

Really.

8\.   
Nathan knew that Duke wasn’t pleased about him and Audrey, but he knew that Duke was tough enough to deal with it. He knew that even if Duke wasn’t, there was no way Nathan was willing to give up the one person who made him truly, completely happy.

9.  
After a while Duke’s love for Audrey morphed into something else: friendship, with, yes, a little bit of residual jealously, but he was happy enough to be around her at all. Dealing with Nathan on the regular was a piece of shit but still.

It was worth it in the end.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying to fix the TERRIBLE characterization that happened to Duke Crocker in the last couple of seasons. Neither he nor Nathan were willing to NUT UP and ask Audrey out so they were forced to bicker over her and it was just bad, heterosexual writing. So I wrote this.


End file.
